


Lightplay

by aesc



Series: Nantucket AU [66]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-09
Updated: 2017-04-09
Packaged: 2018-10-16 21:35:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10579950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aesc/pseuds/aesc
Summary: A photograph.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Photograph by yarnaddict, shamelessly manipulated by me.

Like most of the important things in his life, Rodney keeps one copy of the photograph on his hard drive and another magneted to the refrigerator. Most of the time other things cover it up -- menus, reminders for vet visits, postcards John sends from places like Back-Ass Woods, Maine -- and it's bent, soft at the corners from falling off the refrigerator and being stepped on. A water ring blurs the ink that colors John's arm.  
  
  
"You have not taken a vacation in years," Radek says. He pushes his glasses up his nose, as he always does when anxious. "You are burning out."  
  
"Ridiculous." Rodney stares at the hieroglyphics on the white board, watches them blur briefly into legibility before fading into cuneiform again. He distracts himself by scowling at Radek, who pushes his glasses up again. "And whose project is this anyway? Oh, yes: _mine_. And whose equations helped make this possible? Mine again. I'm at the top of my game." He erases an operator, thinks for a moment, then writes it back in.  
  
"Perhaps," Radek says, in a way that says there's no _perhaps_ about it.  
  
"He's right, Rodney."  
  
"Oh, _thank_ you." He redirects his glare to Sam, who shrugs it off and smiles the smile he should have stopped finding attractive long ago. "Don't you have your own work to do?"  
  
"I do, but I've been double-checking your work all morning." Rodney opens his mouth to give her a piece of his mind, because his work _does not need checking_ and what does he look like, a research assistant? but Sam steamrollers over him. "Radek's _right_ , Rodney. Go out and... and see the sun."  
  
"Go out and develop melanoma, you mean," Rodney says, and wonders if he should erase the operator again.  
  


* * *

  
  
He wakes up to John's breath between his shoulders, a hand on his hip to steady him in sleep. Carefully he turns and John turns with him, rolling into his back.  
  
John's bedroom window opens west to the sound and to the seabreeze, and the sun that arrives late to the morning, like John, governed by its own lazy time.  
  
When it does come the slow light gilds John's skin, which sweat has glazed to a dark gold, and the shadows, the sheets, are the setting for eyes that watch Rodney, heavy with sleep and meaning. Rodney stares at him a moment, the sleek, unself-conscious stretch of flesh wearing scars that speak though John is silent, and the softer marks of Rodney's presence -- teeth, bruises at his hips, come that Rodney had missed last night, too busy breathing in the salt warmth of John's neck.  
  
"Hey," John says, which is _good morning_ and _come here_ , and Rodney comes, shadowing John's body with his own.  
  


* * *

  
  
A week after Sam had thrust her house keys at him and told him to get _out_ of here, McKay, Rodney stumbles down a windswept Nantucket beach. His head buzzes, clogged up with thoughts the salt breeze and oceanic murmuring can't quite clear out, way too much in there at the wrong end of twenty-four hours of work.  
  
"Burned out," he mutters to himself, shoving his hands deeper into the pockets of his fleece jacket. Moisture weighs down the wind, which swirls sluggishly around him, carried from some storm out on the Atlantic. The sand drags on him too, still damp from last night's rain and the morning tide, and he shuffles and slides through it like a drunk. In the distance gulls wheel and shriek and a pelican bobs on the waves, and he supposes it's scenic and he should take a picture, but he'd left his camera back at the house.  
  
"I thought I was supposed to see the goddamn sun," he mutters as he glares up at the sky, where the sun hides behind obscuring clouds.  
  
He makes two circuits of the beach, the diameter marked out by ancient, toppled pylons and the beach entrance, not really sure _why_ he was stopping and starting where it was, only that it makes sense that he should stop and start there. Thirty hours of wakefulness have anaesthetized reason, and he thinks distantly it's a good thing the only people out here to watch him wandering around are the birds and the --  
  
the Frisbee that almost takes his head off, the black dog charging madly and exuberantly past him to retrieve it and then drop it at Rodney's feet, and the man with dark, disheveled hair and bare feet who rushes up to apologize, but not before the dog shakes sea water all over Rodney's pants.  
  


* * *

  
  
An empty day, with no charters for John and no work for Rodney. John brings Rodney a cup of coffee on the porch, bare feet soft on wood that the sun has faded to weatherworn grey. He sits, steals a sip despite Rodney's glare, props his feet on the tabletop, leans back in his chair, all long, lazy muscle. Rodney swallows a too-hot mouthful and thinks about John stretching underneath him the night before, the bend, the twisting arc of his body.  
  
The old khaki cutoffs don't hide the surgical scar that John doesn't talk about. His tan is sort of patchy, darker on his neck and arms and legs, paler under his shirt though not by much, a tan that, like the solid muscles under it and the wrinkles at the corner of John's eyes, speaks to work and life. John has mid-digital hair on his toes, which doesn't surprise Rodney at all, and the skin over the fine scaffolding of his foot is decorated with a pale, arrowing streak of tan line from his flip-flops.  
  


* * *

  
  
He trails salt and sand into John Sheppard's house, though not as much as the dog, who evades any attempt to dry him off and rushes for his water bowl to drink in sloppy, noisy gulps. The three of them take up too much space in the tiny kitchen, and Rodney, exhaustion-clumsy, bangs into one of the kitchen chairs. It grates against tile and sand.  
  
"Living room's through there," John Sheppard says, pointing to a doorway. Rodney nods and trails through into a small room with a couch and chair and TV and not much else.  
  
Collapses on the couch and listens to Sheppard poking around the kitchen, the dog hoovering up something from the floor, and thinks about taking his jacket off. Distantly he hears Sheppard ask if he'd like coffee, and yes he would but Rodney's voice isn't working and neither is his brain, and as he's trying to jump-start himself he realizes that he's warm under his jacket, in the close, antique air of an old house, that the light is soft and gold and John Sheppard is there, looking down at him, soft mouth asking or telling something, maybe to get off the couch you have _sand_ or... or, oh yeah, coffee --  
  


* * *

  
  
Later that afternoon they head out to the beach. Rodney knows almost every inch of it, even the parts out beyond the toppled pylons. Cash roots around in them to excavate old seaweed and driftwood and the occasional dead fish.  
  
There's wind like the first day, but it carries salt and sunlight now, and the dry air pushes the clouds up to distant, delicate wisps. The people are back, noisy and colorful against sky and sand and the gulls whirl around them.  
  
Sand bracelets John's ankles when he walks at the edge of the waves, and the sun and wind love him and he loves them, so effortlessly happy he makes Rodney's breath catch a moment. The wind tugs the hem of his shirt, his hair, and he lopes along with his hands in his pockets, lazy as the light that has nothing to do but bake into the afternoon. His shoulder bumps against Rodney every few steps, and maybe they could walk like this forever, with the white noise of the ocean and seabirds and John's shoulder against his, the lines around his eyes etched with contentment.  
  
John only has to look at a girl to persuade her to take their picture, and she laughs as she tells them to stand closer, they look like strangers, so they press close together, _put your arm around him_ she says, gesturing encouragingly to Rodney, and Rodney does.  
  
  
  
Rodney sort-of remembers it, that day, but doesn't remember if it had been a woman who'd taken their picture or a man, or a beautiful girl who'd said _yes_ before John even asked the question. The sand, the summer-heavy heat, the water-sound, the blue sky he supplies from habit, John's white shirt and his own striped one from the photograph itself. There's very little he actually remembers.  
  
What he _does_ recall:  
  
John's eyes bright behind his sunglasses, his body acquiescent against Rodney's, and Rodney's -- Rodney's hand on John's shoulder, traveling to touch the sun-licked nape of his neck.


End file.
